Teal Ombre Birthday Cake

I recently hosted a big surprise party for my Dad's 60th birthday. One of the many desserts I made was a teal ombre cake. I had seen some many pictures of pink ombre cakes on the net and really wanted to make one my self, as I am obsessed with ombre right now. The theme for the party was 1950's. The main colours we used were teal, tiffany blue, light blue and cream.

It's super easy to make an ombre cake. All you have to do is choose your favourite white or vanilla cake base (recipe or boxed mix) and tint the batter to your liking. The hardest part is making sure that the layers have a different amount of dye. Also the colour lightens when baked so you need to make sure there is a gradual difference, which can be quite hard.

To make a four layer cake you need a double batch of batter and two 8" round cake pans. Make sure to grease the pans and put a layer of parchment paper on the bottom for easy release. Each batch makes two layers. Let them cool then stack them with vanilla buttercream between the layers. I did a crumb coat on the outside and a final dot (not really sure what it is called) technique on the final outer layer. I also made some star decorations with my cricut cake machine and put them on floral wire.

Crumb coat

Dots

Dots, smeared 

It turned out to be a great cake, especially it being the first cake I have made. I'm a cupcake girl!

This is the only picture of inside the cake that was taken. The knife we had just shredded the cake but you still get what it looks like.

Enjoy!

Custom Chocolate Bars

Ingredients

A couple of weeks ago was National S'more Day, as I was surfing the internet looking for s'more related goodies I stumbled across Not So Humble Pie's posting on S'more Chocolate Bars. They looked so good that I had to try them.

Fast forward three weeks and I finally had some time to try them out, but first I needed a chocolate bar mold. Boy, that was hard to find. I went to the wholesale baking place where I pick up all of my supplies from and they didn't have any thick plain old chocolate bar molds, they were either super skinny or had sudoku on them. I settled on a large chocolate bar mold that I would have to cut into smaller pieces.

First off I followed the recipe and made a s'more chocolate bar, I made sure I tempered the chocolate correctly to get the nice glossy finish. Luckily, the chocolate turned out great! The next bar I tried was a neapolitan bar that I came up with while at the grocery store getting ingredients. I already had some strawberry fluff that my Mom brought me back from Florida so I got some Nilla biscuits to go with it for the vanilla part of the neapolitan equation. Of course you can make any combination of chocolate bars, I can't wait to see what I dream up next...potato chips anyone?!

Here is a little photo journal process (recipe steps) I did to make my delicious custom chocolate bars. 

Chocolate to temper

Lindt Chocolate

Chocolate starting to melt

Chocolate tempering

Top part of the bar, chocolate in the mold

S'more Bar

Toasted Marshmallow (you should have
seen the size of the torch)

Marshmallow in the chocolate

Graham Crackers

Finished S'more Bar

Neapolitan Bar

Ingredients

Toasted Strawberry Marshmallow

Biscuits on top of the chocolate and marshmallow

Finished Neapolitan bar

If I could change anything for next time I'd make sure my chocolate was a little more set before I started putting the layers not the bar. As you can see from the picture above the marshmallow came through in the shallow areas because the chocolate wasn't set long enough.

At the end, they turned out delicious. 

Enjoy!

Peanut Butter and Jam Cupcakes

So I ran out of blogging material and it's been awhile since my last blog so I thought I'd make some cupcakes.  Of course it's 35 degrees outside and ridiculously humid outside but my curly hair can take it. I also got these cute Peanuts cupcake liners that I just had to use.

I made a vanilla or butter cake, cupcake and filled it with strawberry jam topped with peanut butter frosting AND strawberry frosting but unfortunately by the time I came around to making the strawberry one my butter was way too soft and I ended up with a really runny frosting.  I didn't have enough time to firm it up so it looks really funny in the pictures.

This recipe is now my new stand-by cupcake recipe, it looks kinda funny after it's made if you don't get the butter really soft but it still tastes great!

Yellow Butter Cupcakes (makes 18)

2 eggs
2/3 cup sour cream (full fat)
1 1/2 tsp. vanilla extract
2 cups cake flour
1 cup sugar
1/2 tsp. baking soda, baking powder and salt
3/4 cup unsalted butter

Mix all of the dry ingredients in a bowl (this will be your main bowl), in another bowl mix eggs, vanilla and 3 Tbsp. of the sour cream.  Add the butter and sour cream to the dry ingredients, mix in.  Slowly add the egg mixture, blend for a couple of seconds and you are ready to put the batter into the cupcake tin. Bake at 350 degrees for 15 minutes.  Cool in tins for 10 mins.

Peanut Butter Frosting

1/4 cup butter
3/4 cup peanut butter
1 cup powdered sugar
1 tsp. vanilla extract

Mix all together until you get a desired consistency.

Jam Frosting

1/4 cup butter
1/4 cup jam
2 cups powdered sugar
1 T. milk (if needed)

Mix all together until you get a desired consistency.

Assemble all together and om nom nom!

Enjoy!

OMG Baked Goodness

Back in April, my friend Cailin from A White Picket Fence and I went on a mini-cupcake crawl to a couple of cupcakeries in Toronto.  It was a wet and gloomy day but we didn't mind as we were in search for some awesome cupcakes.  Our first stop was OMG Baked Goodness which is located on Dundas St. W. between Dufferin St. and Lansdowne, a very cute shop.

Now let me start off saying that I really don't enjoy vegan cupcakes and that's just what OMG is a vegan cupcake store that also sells tarts, sweet breads and other sweets.  But we were there for the cupcakes, and I guess the cupcakes were good but nothing compared to regular eggs and dairy cupcakes. Cailin and I bought three different kinds of cupcakes.

So my review - the chocolate cupcake I had it was a good dense chocolate cupcake.  The vanilla, cupcake tasted like a corn muffin.  It was really lacking the sweetness you'd expect.  The carrot we tried was really good, the spices were perfect and the cream cheese icing was not too dense, but it did taste like a muffin and not a cupcake (I have a major issue with textures of things!).  Probably my biggest issue was that the icing had gone all hard, it was like they were sitting out for a long time and when we got there they had only been opened for one hour.

All in all, I wouldn't go back again but that's because I'm not vegan and I can eat regular cupcakes.  If I was it would probably be my go to shop for vegan desserts.

Chocolate Chip Cupcakes

This is my first Martha Stewart Cupcakes Club in a really long time. I joined the club right at the beginning, but lost interest when I wasn't enjoying the product I was making from the cookbook. Well, this month wasn't the best time to start up again. The cupcakes turned out dense and heavy just like a muffin.  I find a lot of the recipes for the cookbook are like this. There is a HUGE difference between a cupcake and a muffin.  The first and foremost is the density of it, if it's dense it's a MUFFIN. I made the cupcakes for my students and at least they enjoyed them.

Thanks to Rebecca from the Baking Sisters for choosing this month's cupcake.  Next month Candied Hazelnut Cupcakes.  If you'd like to learn more about the baking club click here and please make sure to check out the other member's blogs.

Everything you need

Flour covered chocolate chips (so they don't sink to the bottom)

Batter without the egg whites

Whipping up the egg whites

Batter with egg whites

Finished batter